The Committee on Biosocial Science of the Social Science Research Council has organized a working group to explore the biological foundations of parenting offspring development. The charge of this group is to improve collaboration among scientists and to identify promising opportunities and paradigms for future research in this field. Three workshops have been planned. The first workshop brought together scholars from medical, psychological, and sociological disciplines to explore biosocial aspects of pregnancy, the birth process, and early infant care. The second workshop will, like the first, be exploratory and empirical in nature, bringing together relevant knowledge from diverse fields; this workshop will focus on the effects of recent demographic and social changes on the experience of the child from toddlerhood through adolescence. The third and final workshop will attempt to synthesize what has been learned from the previous workshops and produce a statement of future research needs.